If you have an iPad or iPhone, you know that your device cannot natively view WordPerfect files. (Yes, there are still plenty of folks in the legal community who use WordPerfect.)

There is an app for that — WPD Viewer — originally reviewed by Jeff Richardson in 2010. Created by LawBox, this app will let you view a WordPerfect document, but you cannot edit it. Regardless, you can cut and paste into a new document if you wish to edit it.

The folks at Corel liked the app so much that they bought the right to sell it. As of January 2014, the app has come back to LawBox. The founder of LawBox, Nicholas Zeltzer, has already updated the app for iOS7. One of the post’s commenters, Charles Jannace, added that the app connects directly with Dropbox.

Although this app does not give you a smooth transition from WordPerfect to Word or back again, it does give you a way to access and copy and paste a WordPerfect document. -CCE

Jeff reviews a free app created by Matthew Zorn called “DkT.” In this post, Jeff leads you through the various steps to use this app. Because this is the first version, no doubt Matthew will tweak it as time goes by. Regardless of its minor flaws, if you practice in federal court, this is an incredibly useful tool for your iPad or iPhone. -CCE

If you ever practice in federal court, then using PACER is a part of your job. PACER websites typically let you select a mobile option so that you can access PACER on an iPad or an iPhone, but the experience isn’t ideal. You cannot save your username or password, it is difficult to manually enter case numbers, and every time you access a docket sheet or a document you have to pay to do so. Matthew Zorn, an attorney at a large New York law firm, decided to do something about that, so he spent nine months writing a useful and beautifully designed app that he calls DkT. The DkT app is free and can access PACER for federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts.

‘Know your audience’ is a fundamental rule of skillful writing. For lawyers writing briefs in the 21st century, a key part of knowing your judicial audience is knowing what device will display your brief. While some judges print briefs and read the hard copy, a quiet revolution is occurring: more and more judges are reading briefs primarily on iPads or other tablets. According to experts on legal writing, this change in reading should trigger a similarly significant change in writing.

In Butcher v. TSWS d/b/a Pot-O-Gold, (S.D. Tex. August 25, 2011), the Southern District of Texas denied an employer’s motion for summary judgment in a case involving FLSA overtime claims brought by truck drivers. The employer argued that the plaintiffs were subject to the FLSA’s motor carrier exemption (which would mean that the drivers were not entitled to overtime pay) because the plaintiffs work affected the safety of interstate transportation. Although the plaintiffs never crossed state lines in driving their trucks for the defendant, the company claimed that the employees could have been called upon to drive interstate at any time. The court acknowledged that under Songer v. Dillon Resources, 618 F.3d 467 (5th Cir. 2010), an intrastate driver may be exempt during periods when the driver ‘could have been called upon’ to drive interstate at any time. The court acknowledged that under Songer v. Dillon Resources, 618 F.3d 467 (5th Cir. 2010), an intrastate driver may be exempt during periods when the driver “could have been called upon” to drive interstate.

There are hyperlinks throughout the article to additional blog posts that shed more light on the world-wide scope of this situation. -CCE

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration review of 30 antibiotics used in livestock found that more than half posed a significant risk of exposing humans to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Despite the review, which occurred from 2001 to 2010, the federal agency allowed the drugs—used as additives in animal feed and water—to remain on the market, according to a report released on Monday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that based its findings on internal documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The recent December 22, 2011 split decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the long-anticipated Opinion in the case of Toney v. Chester County Hospital, 2011 WL 6413948 (Pa. Dec. 22, 2011)(Baer, Todd, and McCaffery, JJ. join in support of affirmance)(Castille, Saylor, Eakin, JJ. join in support of reversal)(Orie Melvin, J. not participating) serves to fuel an argument in favor of the extension of the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED).

It is not every day you see lawsuits about insurance policies from 1986 to 1987.

Add Judge Paul Grimm’s powerhouse footnotes and you get a great lesson in document retention policies and litigation holds (plus a great footnote on the state of mind exception to hearsay for all the evidence fans).

Please note additional articles on client communication and relations at the end of the article. – CCE

There is no doubt that it’s a litigator’s job to realistically assess the case and, when the situation demands it, to deliver bad news to the client. How that assessment is crafted and communicated, however, is where the care comes in.

Please note that the 2014 amendments to Oklahoma’s Workers’ Compensation Court Rules are not effective until January 31, 2014. –CCE

The Court Rules of the Workers’ Compensation Court as amended and approved by that Court on December 20, 2013, having been submitted to this Court for its consideration, are hereby approved. The rules are for official publication and shall become effective on January 31, 2014. The rules as amended shall be published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal three times. By today’s adoption of these rules, submitted by the Workers’ Compensation Court, this Court neither indicates what meaning should be ascribed to them in any given application nor settles their validity against challenges that may be launched on constitutional or statutory grounds, federal or state.

My Forthcoming Article, “Bamboozled by a Comma: The Second Circuit’s Misdiagnosis of Ambiguity in American International Group, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp.” by Ken Adams, Adams On Contract Drafting Blog (to be published in 16 Scribes J. Legal Writing (forthcoming 2014).

The majority of lawyers in my part of the world aggressively use experienced paralegals and legal assistants to provide lower costs and quality work for their clients. It is simple math. It cuts costs for clients and increases profits for the lawyers. It is a win-win. Yet, there is no dispute that legal fees, which include criminal fines and filing fees, depositions, discovery, and e-discovery expenses, can drive up a client’s bill in a hurry.

Like medical costs for a serious illness, many people find these expenses outside their reach. -CCE

In our country, lawyers and judges regulate their own markets. The upshot is that getting legal help is enormously expensive and out of reach for the vast majority of Americans. Anyone faced with a contract dispute, family crisis, foreclosure or eviction must pay a lawyer with a JD degree to provide service one-on-one in the same way lawyers have done business for hundreds of years.

Increasingly, the only ‘persons’ with access to legal help are “artificial persons” — corporations, organizations and governments. No wonder that in a 2010 New York study, it was shown 95% of people in housing court are unrepresented. The same is true in consumer credit and child support cases; 44% of people in foreclosures are representing themselves—against a well-represented bank, no small number of whom engaged in robo-signing and sued people based on faulty information.

[T]his is the first time in history that the Office suite is designed by keeping desktop and touchscreen devices in mind, particularly when Windows 8 is just months away from its GA launch. One of the most powerful and frequently used applications in Office is the Outlook. Outlook 2013, akin to other programs in the suite, has received much love from the developers, and now looks more polished and elegant. Basically, it’s the same old Outlook with an improved functionality, aesthetics and ergonomics. We decided to do a brief overview of the new Office Suite, and an in-depth review of the new features, changes and enhancements that are made to MS Outlook.

If you have any interest in the fine points of legal citation and legal writing, this is the blog for you. Citation master, Peter Martin, who holds an endowed chair named for the late Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law Emeritus at Cornell, has created a forum to discuss and elaborate on citations as they are used by counsel and the court.

This is a “must bookmark” for anyone interested in legal writing, cite-checking, or how to cite properly. Please click on “About – Scope and Purpose” to read more about the authors’ intent for this blog. -CCE

When law enforcement execute a search warrant on a residence, officers can use the “knock and announce” rule. Police knock on the door, announce their intent to enter, and wait a “reasonable time” for the resident to open the door. Obviously, this approach has its drawbacks. Officers’ announcement of their presence before entering the residence can cause possible destruction of evidence and/or endanger the officers or others.

Law enforcement has another option – the “no knock” rule, which is just what it sounds like. Officers can obtain a search warrant to enter without knocking and announcing their presence or intentions before entering the residence. To obtain a no-knock warrant, the officers need to prove to the judge issuing the warrant that the officers are not disregarding reliable information indicating that this type of use of force is inappropriate. When procedures are properly followed, the involved officers have qualified immunity if the homeowner later sues for damages or excessive use of force under the Fourth Amendment.

When issuing a no-knock warrant, the police kick in or knock down the door to enter the residence. Regardless of the method, the door is often completely knocked off its hinges. In this Second Circuit case, the effect was even more dramatic. Around 6 a.m., Ms. McColley, a mother, and her young daughter woke to the sounds of the police knocking down the front door and the explosion of a flash bang grenade. -CCE

An immunity defense is premature for the drug investigator who led a turbulent raid on the apartment of a family with no criminal history, the 2nd Circuit ruled.

* * *

Michael Riley, an investigator for the Rensselaer County Drug & Gang Task Force, obtained the warrant days earlier based on the word of a confidential informant.

Though the CI claimed to have bought crack-cocaine from a man named Sport at the apartment, Riley conducted a background check on the property that revealed McColley as the tenant with her spotless record and young child.

He applied for the no-knock warrant anyway without mentioning the background check, the two-judge majority found.

‘The search of McColley’s home did not uncover any money, weapons, drugs, drug-related paraphernalia, or any evidence of criminality of any kind,’ Judge Rosemary Pooler wrote for the court. ‘The ERT took only a National Grid electric and gas bill and a registration bill for Hudson Valley Community College as fruits of the search.’

Mr. Ward raises an interesting point. An appeal cannot be filed until the court issues a final, appealable order. In many jurisdictions, the trial court’s journal entry or judgment on the merits of the all the causes of action in a case is indeed a final, appealable order, even when the court has not yet ruled on an attorney fee and cost award.

Sometimes attorneys wait to file an appeal until the attorney fee award is decided, which may be past the tolling of the 30-day deadline to file the appeal on the merits. Mr. Ward explains how to resolve this issue. -CCE

Have you made the switch to Microsoft Office 2013? If you have, hopefully you are happy with all the changes that inevitably follow each new version. The Addictive Tips Blog is a useful tool, along with the always handy “F1,” if you find that things do not work in the way they did in older versions.

This post shows you how to disable the typing animation feature. It is not a permanent change to the software – you can get it back anytime you want it. -CCE

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program’s revised rules for veterans and individuals with disabilities take effect March 24, 2014. In addition to goal-setting/benchmarking and increased attention to good faith efforts, the rules will require federal contractors to deploy a number of new or revised forms. The forms include applicant and new hire invitations to self-identify, mandatory elements of job posting communications with the state job service, and new elements of the EEO job advertisement tagline. Certain of these documents will be required beginning on March 24, 2014, and use of others can be delayed until the first date of your next affirmative action plan year.

[G]iven its limited resources, the IRS said that in 2014 it will stop preparing tax returns for people who need help, such as those who are elderly or disabled. The agency also plans to answer only “basic” tax law questions, and only during the normal filing season through April 15. Instead, it will direct people to the website and other automated sources of information. . . .

In her opinion in Stuart v. Loomis, United States District Judge Catherine Eagles held the ‘speech and display’ provisions of North Carolina’s ‘The Woman’s Right to Know Act’ unconstitutional under the First Amendment. . . .

Your health care provider may be moving from paper records to electronic health records (EHRs) or may be using EHRs already. EHRs allow providers to use information more effectively to improve the quality and efficiency of your care, but EHRs will not change the privacy protections or security safeguards that apply to your health information.

LinkedIn has filed a lawsuit to stop competitors that are scraping its servers and gathering hundreds of thousands of LinkedIn’s users’ profiles. The competitors use bots that use the information stolen from LinkedIn to create false profiles that attempt to interact with LinkedIn’s users. LinkedIn’s Complaint is included in Mr. Roberts’ post. -CCE

[I]t’s not immediately clear if LinkedIn has a clear-cut legal case since it is not necessarily illegal to copy information from a website. In its complaint, the company is relying on its own terms of services that forbid scraping as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

In the meantime, LinkedIn users may wish to be wary about which invitations to connect they accept.